He considered this view, but not very favorably.  The Booth book was at this time a secret, and he had not told me anything concerning it; but he had it in his mind when he said, with an air of the greatest conviction: 

“I know that Shakespeare did not write those plays, and I have reason to believe he did not touch the text in any way.”

“How can you be so positive?” I asked.

He replied: 

“I have private knowledge from a source that cannot be questioned.”

I now suspected that he was joking, and asked if he had been consulting a spiritual medium; but he was clearly in earnest.

“It is the great discovery of the age,” he said, quite seriously.  “The world will soon ring with it.  I wish I could tell you about it, but I have passed my word.  You will not have long to wait.”

I was going to sail for the Mediterranean in February, and I asked if it would be likely that I would know this great secret before I sailed.  He thought not; but he said that more than likely the startling news would be given to the world while I was on the water, and it might come to me on the ship by wireless.  I confess I was amazed and intensely curious by this time.  I conjectured the discovery of some document—­some Bacon or Shakespeare private paper which dispelled all the mystery of the authorship.  I hinted that he might write me a letter which I could open on the ship; but he was firm in his refusal.  He had passed his word, he repeated, and the news might not be given out as soon as that; but he assured me more than once that wherever I might be, in whatever remote locality, it would come by cable, and the world would quake with it.  I was tempted to give up my trip, to be with him at Stormfield at the time of the upheaval.

Naturally the Shakespeare theme was uppermost during the remaining days that we were together.  He had engaged another stenographer, and was now dictating, forenoons, his own views on the subject—­views coordinated with those of Mr. Greenwood, whom he liberally quoted, but embellished and decorated in his own gay manner.  These were chapters for his autobiography, he said, and I think he had then no intention of making a book of them.  I could not quite see why he should take all this argumentary trouble if he had, as he said, positive evidence that Bacon, and not Shakespeare, had written the plays.  I thought the whole matter very curious.

The Shakespeare interest had diverging by-paths.  One evening, when we were alone at dinner, he said: 

“There is only one other illustrious man in history about whom there is so little known,” and he added, “Jesus Christ.”

He reviewed the statements of the Gospels concerning Christ, though he declared them to be mainly traditional and of no value.  I agreed that they contained confusing statements, and inflicted more or less with justice and reason; but I said I thought there was truth in them, too.